Dormaa-Ahenkro (B/A), Sept. 2, GNA - The Dormaa Office of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has stepped up the campaign to educate the people on the need to get counted during the 2010 National Population and Housing Census.

Mr. Amankwa Boateng, Municipal NCCE Director, speaking to journalists at Dormaa-Ahenkro, explained that the exercise was important not only to ascertain the population of Ghana but also to identify socio-economic characteristics that would enable government to design equitable and objective allocation of resources, fair distribution of services and equal representation at all levels of governance.

He advised the people not to return to their hometowns to get counted but to remain at the present locations adding that data about citizens would be needed in determining the type of development projects that should be executed at the sub-national and national levels.

Mr. Boateng said the 2010 Population and Housing Census would provide basic indicators for tracking government's development programmes, set the framework for assessing the progress of the Millennium Development Goals and afford the country the opportunity of updating the national sampling frame.

On the question of confidentiality of respondents, the Municipal NCCE Director explained that all accredited Census officials would be under oath never to divulge any information on interviewees during the exercise and the Ghana Statistical Service could not share individual's responses with anyone, agencies and law enforcement entities.

Mr. Boateng said that the exercise was not primarily for tax purposes since the government already had in place policies and establishments responsible for identification of taxable Ghanaians.

He said the census comprise basic concepts including "Locality", "Enumeration Area", "Supervision Area", "Household", "Head of Household", "Institutional population", "Census Night" and "Floating population'.

Mr. Boateng reminded the public that mid-night of Sunday, September 26, 2010 would be the reference time to which enumeration of households and living quarters must relate.

He appealed to residents in the Municipality to cooperate with the enumerators by volunteering the necessary information that would at the end of the day give the true reflection of their numbers and living conditions for development planners to use in drawing their plans and projections.

CK/CO

2 Sept 10